My fiancé and I decided to book Cineaverde for videography services for our 1.8.19 destination wedding. We spoke to Jon (the owner) over the phone and signed the contract and made our deposit in early July 2018. Fast forward to November 2018 - our final payment was due a month before the wedding and with holidays fast approaching I was going to make our final payment a few weeks early. We were previously given a link which was a portal for our booking with our details and a link to pay our final amount. On 11/25/18 I attempted to make the final payment, and when I accessed our link I noticed that there was not an option to pay via credit card and instead the directions said to make payment via check and mail. I did not want to do this and thought it was odd since I was able to make payment via credit card for the deposit so I emailed Jon asking him for directions on how to do so. THIS IS WHERE EVERYTHING WENT SOUTH!
After sending Jon an email I received a return email saying "Message not delivered". I then decided to look at the Cineaverde website which no longer existed. As you can imagine I became increasingly concerned. I had my then fiancé (Jayse) call Jon with resulted in the call going straight to voicemail. After email and phone call attempts I reached out to my planner. My planner attempted to reach Jon multiple ways, as so did Jayse and I leaving various voicemails etc. My planner finally was able to get a hold of him on 11/29 which he promised he would get back to Jayse and I ASAP. A few days passed and Jon did not get in contact with us. Jayse and I continued to contact him via email and phone call with no success of a response. Our planner told us it was in our best interest to figure out a Plan B for videography services for our wedding, which Jayse and I 100% agreed on. Our AMAZING planner reached out to different videography companies on our behalf and we were able to contract another videographer on 12/8/18.
As mentioned above, our final payment to Cineaverde was due a month before our 1.8.19 wedding. December 9, 2018 was 2 weeks after we attempted to pay our final payment to Cineaverde, along with it being the due date of our final payment. I opened up my email on 12/9/18 with an email from Jon stating the following "Hey, sorry for the delay! Just sent over an invoice that can be paid online for the final payment. We did have a website issue a week or so ago that took some time getting our site back up and stopped our incoming emails. Let me know if you need anything! Thanks again." I did not respond to the email, instead Jayse called Jon (with no answer), left a voicemail asking for him to call us back regarding the invoice etc. This was 12/9/18 and we did not receive a callback from Jon. Instead, I received another email on 12/11/18 that stated the EXACT same thing as the 12/9/18 email. I again, did not respond via email and instead Jayse called Jon (with no response and left ANOTHER voicemail).
Jon FINALLY called us back on 12/12/18 and spoke to my fiancé Jayse. After a lengthy conversation, and what I would like to consider a plethora of excuses Jon stated that he was back in Key West and was willingly and able to still film our wedding. Jayse stated that we would not be using his services and attempted to get our $970.62 deposit back which Jon refused to do so. Later that night we received an email from Jon "apologizing" with the email ending with "feel free to email me if you need anything, again my apologies". We did not respond. We received another email on 12/18/18 with him "checking in on us" asking what our thoughts were for our wedding coverage. We did not respond. We received a final email from him on 12/26/18 which stated the following "Hello, I hope Christmas was great. Since I haven't heard from you two on my last few emails, I'll assume that you are deciding to break contract. I am a small business and rely on my upcoming invoices, that were planned for many months in advance, to continue a successful business and of course my family. Hope your wedding goes well and best of luck to you both."
The above information is strictly factual - Facts aside I will say that until the last email we received I was unsure if I was going to write a review however Jon had the audacity to try to make me feel guilty for not continuing his services by mentioning his family all while still having $970.62 of my fiancé and I's hard earned money for a service he will never render on. We too are family and $970.62 is a lot of money to just throw away. He also had the audacity to tell us that we were breaking contract by not responding to 2!! Emails all while Jayse, my planner and I reached out to him countless of times over a 2 week period with zero response, yet in his mind that was not breaking contract.
Do yourself a favor and hire another videographer for your wedding!!! read more
